For those who are a little behind, Haswell is the codename for Intel's 4th Generation processors -- the successor to the Ivy Bridge architecture. It is based on the 22 nanometer (nm) process node and is the first to be built from top to bottom for power savings and performance in regards to 3D/tri-gate transistors. They will mainly power Ultrabooks and some tablets.

David Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel Architecture Group, gave a sneak peek at the Haswell chips at IDF 2012's first keynote yesterday. According to Perlmutter, Haswell will provide 2x the graphics performance of Ivy Bridge -- and this was demonstrated in two videos running side by side, where one was Haswell-powered and the other was Ivy Bridge-powered.

However, I got a closer look at Haswell graphics today. Two monitors were showing a "Skyrim" game in progress, where one was powered by 3rd Generation Core GT2 and the second was powered by Haswell GT3. The difference? Performance level, where the GT3 is considered top-of-the-line. The GT3 has double the number of execution units (EUs) as the GT2 while still maintaining low power comparable to the Intel HD 4000.

The GT3 is running "Skyrim" at 1920x1080 resolution with High settings, while the HD 4000 GPU next door is running the same game at the same frame rate, but at Medium settings and a 1366x768 resolution.

Overall, Haswell will keep certain aspects of Ivy Bridge, like Intel Hyper-Threading, Ring Interconnect and Intel Turbo Boost. However, they provide twice the performance while cutting power significantly.

Here's a shot of the two monitors showing "Skyrim," with GT2 on the left and GT3 on the right: